DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 2006

Today in Iraq

Friday, April 07, 2006

DAILY WAR NEWS FOR FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 2006

AND
THE CHILDREN SUFFER THE MOST FROM WAR - PHOTO: Young victims of a car
bomb lie in a hospital where they were taken for treatment Thursday
April 6, 2006 in Najaf 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Baghdad,
Iraq. A car bomb exploded Thursday in the Shiite holy city of Najaf,
killing at least 10 people and threatening to sharpen sectarian
tensions. (AP Photo/Alaa al-Marjani)

The
BBC News website is reporting in detail on events in Iraq throughout 7
April, to try to convey the fullest and most accurate picture we can of
the reality of life there, almost three years after the fall of
Baghdad. On this page, from dawn to dusk Baghdad time, we aim to report
the news in greater detail than usual as well as taking a look at what
the Iraqi media are saying.

"We
don't know whether it was an innocent civilian or whether that was an
insurgent - we don't know, because we never stop". The words of a
former security consultant, explaining the story behind the video
footage.

Frequent
shootings at checkpoints, plus raids by U.S. troops and airstrikes
resulting in Iraqi deaths, have angered many Iraqis, who contend that
ignorance of their culture and the Arabic language hamper the
Americans. Some say flatly that American soldiers act like "cowboys in
Western movies," in Kamal's words. Some U.S. commanders acknowledge the
problem exists. But they blame it on insurgents who disguise themselves
as civilians. U.S. officials insist soldiers and Marines are careful to
identify targets before opening fire. Nevertheless, a spate of deaths
has badly strained relations between Americans and Iraqi leaders:

_
In the most serious recent case, about 12 U.S. Marines are under
investigation for possible war crimes in a Nov. 19 incident in western
Iraq in which one Marine and 24 Iraqis, including women and children,
were killed. The U.S. military launched an inquiry after Time magazine
said last month that it obtained a video taken by a journalism student
who disputed the Marines' initial account of the incident, which began
after a Marine was killed in a car bombing.

_ On Feb. 26, an
Iraqi special forces team accompanied by American advisers killed 16
people, described by U.S. officials as insurgents, and rescued an Iraqi
hostage in a gun battle in northeastern Baghdad. U.S. officials said no
American soldier fired a shot. Nevertheless, the Shiite governor of
Baghdad suspended contacts with the United States, and Shiite lawmakers
boycotted a planned meeting to discuss formation of the new government
because they said the raid occurred at a mosque complex.

_
Police accused American troops of killing 11 people, mostly civilians,
in a March 15 shootout near Balad north of the capital. U.S. officials
disputed the allegation, saying only one militant and three civilians
were killed. They included two women and a child, and the case is under
investigation. No figures are available on how many Iraqi civilians,
including women and children, have been killed in shootings, airstrikes
and other violence involving American forces since the 2003 invasion.
However, light sentences for U.S. troops convicted of killing civilians
have left some human rights groups seething. At least 16 American
troops have been sentenced in such cases, according to a count by The
Associated Press. Six received prison sentences of three or more years
in prison. Four cases are pending.

Anti-U.S.
forces have spread their control over the city of Samarra, according to
a Shiite cleric in charge of Shiite shrines in the city. "Samarra is
still in the hands of terror … It is outside the jurisdiction and
control of the state," said Saleh al-Haydari in an interview. A bomb
attack in February had badly damaged a major Shiite shrine in the city
sparking protests and revenge attacks. The country is still reeling
from the consequences of the bombing which have plunged it into
political turmoil and sectarian infighting. Haydari said the people of
Samarra, estimated at more than 200,000, were powerless in the face of
there rebels. "We distinguish between the terrorists and the citizens
of Samarra," he said. U.S. troops have so far mounted two massive
attacks to regain control of the city. One of them led to large-scale
displacement of the population.

Fleeing
Baghdad’s sectarian violence, Shia families find shelter in southern
city. The old woman's face and hands are covered with traditional Arab
tattoos. Passing her hands through her granddaughter's hair, Wuzyia
Mubarak Salman, 60, told her story with tears streaming down her
cheeks. Salman, a Shia, moved with her family to Abu Ghraib in western
Baghdad thirty years ago. Last month, she abandoned her home after she
received an anonymous death threat. "They wrote on the wall of our
house, 'You have 24 hours to leave or we will blow up the house [with]
you and your children [inside]’," said Salman, who fled to Kut - a
majority Shia city, 160 kilometres south of Baghdad - after the
warning. Salman, who presently lives in two tents with her two married
sons and ten grandchildren, says Shias are targeted because they are
taking over the reins of power in Iraq and Sunnis don’t like it.
"'Leave this area,’ they said. 'We don't want you. You are Shias and do
not have a place here'," recalled Salman, who’s nephew was killed on
his way to work. Since the 2003 US-led invasion, Kut has escaped most
of the unrest afflicting some parts of the country, and in the past
month it has become a refuge for Shias escaping the sectarian violence
that has boiled over since the February bombings of two Shia shrines in
Samarra. Iraq's ministry of migration and displacement estimates that
as many as 30,000 Shias and Sunnis have been uprooted by the recent
fighting. More than 500 displaced families, the vast majority of them
Shias, have registered in the Kut office, seeking a place to live. Ali
Abbas Jahakir, the head migration ministry in Kut, said the city is
overwhelmed by the new arrivals, "Our governorate is unable to
accommodate all of these families." Most of those who’ve found shelter
here have received death threats and more than half have lost relatives
in the sectarian violence.

According
to estimates, two million out of Iraq's 6.5 million marriages are
unions between Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites. "In the beginning, my family
was worried about our marriage," Hadeel explained. "But in the end, we
convinced them that religious differences were not important enough to
prevent a family from being built." Many of the doctrinal differences
between Sunnis and Shi'ites are minor enough to be dismissed, except by
puritans of both sects. Mixed marriages between Arab Sunnis and
Shi'ites – and also between the predominantly Sunni Kurds and Arabs of
both sects – have been common, even in the days of former president
Saddam Hussein, when Shi'ites were heavily discriminated against.
Hadeel's husband, Jamal Jomaa, noted that the current wave of sectarian
violence was unlikely to disrupt the homes of mixed marriages, since
they were living proof that such violence was useless and unnecessary.
"During the Saddam Hussein regime, we never heard of sectarian
violence, despite all the problems that we went through," Jomaa said.
"Now we have to be strong to show our children that those committing
sectarian violence are doing wrong."

Corruption
at all levels means millions of dollars of investment is making no
difference to suffering citizens. The Washington Post ran a recent
article on the problems with US plans to construct 142 new primary care
clinics across Iraq. The endless chain of subcontracting has left
almost all of these clinics unfinished. Often a clinic is declared
"reconstructed" after a quick paint job, and a couple of desks and
stethoscopes are provided to the clinic. I have witnessed the
construction of one such clinic over the last two years. It lies on the
southern Baghdad-Basra highway in Madain province. Once completed it
was to serve the inhabitants of a dozen surrounding villages. The still
unfinished building is now a barracks for interior ministry commandos.
I've heard that numerous requests from the health ministry to abandon
the site were all turned down or ignored. But reconstruction failures
are just the tip of the iceberg.

Iraq has over 1,200 existing
primary healthcare clinics and about 240 hospitals. They all continue
to operate, though over half of those could shut down with no
noticeable difference. Iraqi healthcare problems are of course not
news. Symptoms include poor sanitation, shortage of essential drugs and
basic medical equipment, erratic electricity and water supply, below
average service, increasing deficiency of specialized, and even junior
training staff, lack of protection for health workers. They have been
omnipresent ever since the sanctions, but they have been exacerbated
lately by the corrupt, lawless environment that surrounds most Iraqi
governmental departments. The culpability lies mostly on the shoulders
of the new Iraqi government. It often blames terrorism for the
deterioration of health services, which is true to a certain extent,
but Iraqis in safer regions, such as southern governorates, where there
is no impediment to reconstruction, continue to suffer from the same
problems. I have served a full year at a state clinic in Basra and I
have faced the same problems I face today in Baghdad. The real reason
is the cancer that is threatening to deliver the deadly blow to the
system: widespread corruption from the lowest janitor in a public
clinic up to the minister of health's office.

Patient
care in Iraq has been the main casualty of an exodus of experienced
doctors caused by rising levels of crime and violence. Those who leave
are replaced by younger doctors with more limited experience - a
problem in Iraq, where many people suffer from chronic complaints
including heart disease, diabetes and hypertension. Aziz Ali, a
40-year-old resident of the al-Zafaraniyah neighborhood south of
Baghdad, has had heart disease and blocked arteries since before the
2003 war. Now he is worried because his doctor has gone. "He left the
country because he was threatened," said Ali. "I have tried three
others but I feel uncomfortable with them. The one I'm using now is an
inexperienced student. I think my case has gone from bad to worse."
Like other professionals, Iraqi doctors have been targeted for attack
and kidnapping because of their relatively high income and social
status. Dr. Alaa Hussein, manager of the Health Ministry's Labor
Development department, says 400 medical specialists have left the
country since early 2004. His ministry has tried to tempt doctors back
to Iraq, but rising violence has kept them from returning - 176 medical
workers have been killed over the same period, while others have been
abducted and held for ransom. "We are trying to fill the gaps by
(employing) recent graduates to meet hospitals' needs," said Hussein. "
At the present time, we have no alternative." In some tense areas
around Baghdad and in the so-called Sunni triangle, licensed nurses
have replaced doctors. "Healthcare in Iraq since 2003 is worse than
during the sanctions," said Naomi. "At that time we had little
equipment and medicine, but in the last three years we have lost almost
all the specialists."

A
government decision to cut food rations has hurt poor Iraqis who cannot
afford high prices on the open market, say economists and Baghdad
residents. Despite rising poverty in Iraq, the government has decided
to cut the food ration budget from $4 billion to $3 billion in 2006, as
the country shifts from a socialist to a free market economy. The Iraqi
government has provided subsidies on basic food items such as flour and
sugar for decades. The United Nations expanded the program when the
country was under crippling economic sanctions. However, subsidies have
now been cut on staples including salt, soap and beans. Trade Ministry
spokesman Faraj Daud said the government will continue to supply Iraqis
with free rice, sugar, flour and cooking oil. The ministry claims that
items that were once scarce during sanctions are now widely available
on the open market and therefore do not need to be distributed by the
government. Approximately 96 percent of Iraq's 28 million people
receive food rations managed by 543 centers. The UN World Food Program
estimated in a 2004 report that one-quarter of the population is highly
dependent on the rations, warning that without them "many lower-income
households, particularly women and children, would not be able to meet
their food requirements." Daud, however, insists that the ministry has
studied the impact of canceling the subsidies and found it would not
hurt families economically. For Qadiryia Mohammad, a mother of eight
with a disabled husband who cannot work, the cuts are devastating. "We
have no income and totally depend on the rations," said Mohammad, 48, a
resident of Baghdad's al-Karkh neighborhood. "The cut on some items and
problems with food distribution might force us to beg." (And I think
the politics behind this, which is the same politics behind the IMF and
World Bank actions in Iraq, are what is really fueling the rebels. The
Iraqis are fighting because they see things getting worse and worse and
worse as 'making the world safe for corporations’ is the main policy
agenda. – Susan)

Clearly
smarting under charges that they are "failing" to tell the good news in
Iraq, the major TV network and cable channels appear to have abandoned
any effort to report what is going on in Iraq. Fearful of being accused
of undermining the war effort, the TV side of journalism apparently
decided to punt and do nothing. Fortunately, the print media and wires
continue to tough it out. Working from the info collected on http://www.icasualties.org/,
I have assembled a snapshot of the first five days of April in Iraq. It
is not a pretty picture. While it certainly could be worse, the facts
on the ground make it very tough to argue that the U.S. is making
progress in securing Iraq.

All violence is relative. In the
United States our cable networks have no trouble spending weeks
covering the disappearance of a teenager in Aruba. In fact, the
saturation coverage of the disappearance of Natalie Holloway would lead
a visitor from Mars to conclude that she was some sort of goddess and
that our very security depended on finding her. Compare that coverage
with the actual events in the last five days in Iraq. If we had 25 car
bombings in New York City and Washington, could George Bush's White
House get away with chiding the media for not focusing on the good news
in the United States? Based on the lingering shock from the four
terrorist strikes on September 11, 2001, I wager that news coverage
would be borderline, if not full blown, hysteria in this country if we
were experiencing what the Iraqis are confronting on a daily basis.

The
problem is not what the news media is reporting. The real problem is
that the White House continues to delude itself into believing that the
problems in Iraq can be solved simply by managing the news. The events
on the ground in Iraq, however, reflect centuries of deep seated
sectarian and ethnic strife. If we cannot create effective security
forces or provide such security ourselves, the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds
in Iraq will seek protection from their own militias. A functioning
government requires, at a minimum, that the people be protected. If it
cannot fulfill that task then the government has little chance of being
accpeted as legitimate. Until that problem is solved Iraq will remain
in the throes of a low-grade, but escalating, civil war.

When
two employees of government-owned al Iraqia television were killed on
assignment a year ago, station managers decided they had to be
memorialized. They soon realized, however, that the photo cabinet
they'd selected wouldn't be big enough. Now, with 35 dead in the last
year and 55 wounded, they're planning to devote a newsroom wall to
remembering departed colleagues. Al Iraqia, Iraq's public broadcasting
network, must surely be among the most dangerous places to work in the
world. The 3,000-employee network includes a large daily newspaper, two
radio stations - one devoted to readings of the Quran - and three
television stations, broadcasting everything from news to soap operas
and children's programming.

"When we go to restless areas, I try
to hide the Iraqia logo, in order not jeopardize the life of the crew
accompanying me," she said. "I do not know why they target our station.
All we do is talk about real life in Iraq." No one can say for sure
who's killing al Iraqia's staff. Many of the deaths clearly were the
work of insurgents who see the station as an extension of the
government and American forces. But others can't be laid to any group,
and al Iraqia's staff presents itself as besieged from all sides. Death
isn't limited to reporters. In recent weeks, two children's radio
programmers were murdered after revealing where they worked at a fake
checkpoint. A station manager and his driver were shot to death as they
approached the station in March. Muhammed Jassim Khudhair, who's second
in charge at the pro-government network, notes that they've asked the
prime minister's officer to consider murdered network employees as
national martyrs, similar to soldiers, which would make their families
eligible for special pensions. Currently, the station pays out about
$1,400 per death.

When
former U.N. chief weapons inspector David Kay told the Senate Armed
Services Committee in January 2004, "We were all wrong," he was
admitting that officials had been wrong to claim Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction. The we-were-all-wrong trope entered the political
lexicon as a mea culpa, but today the White House and its media
defenders employ it as a defense of a war started over phantom weapons.
We may have been wrong, they argue, but so were the Clinton
administration, congress members of both parties and other Western
intelligence agencies. Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund,
appearing on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight (11/11/05), told the host: "One of
the things we have to recall here is, every leading Democrat, including
the Democrats who had access to the same intelligence information like
Jay Rockefeller, approved of the war in Iraq." National Review editor
Rich Lowry told PBS’s NewsHour host Jim Lehrer (11/11/05), "Many
Democrats were saying the same thing because they were all looking at
the same body of intelligence." On November 13 Fox News Sunday anchor
Chris Wallace declared (11/13/05), "Democrats saw basically the same
intelligence the president did and made statements, by and large, that
were just as alarmist." Though the Washington Post (11/12/05) and
Knight Ridder (11/15/05) debunked this partisan version of the claim,
showing that the White House had access to far more extensive
intelligence, the we-were-all-wrong theme does have a grain of truth to
it—particularly when it comes to mainstream journalism. New York Times
Baghdad bureau chief John Burns made a valid point when he told a U.C.
Berkeley conference on Iraq and the media (3/18/04): "We failed the
American public by being insufficiently critical about elements of the
administration’s plan to go to war." Strong cases for the general
failure of mainstream journalism regarding Iraq were featured in the
Columbia Journalism Review (5–6/03) and the New York Review of Books
(2/26/04). But the fact that mainstream media in general suspended
critical judgment when it came to reporting on pre-war Iraq claims
should not be viewed as an excuse—because, in fact, not all mainstream
journalists and pundits got it wrong. Some got it right—simply by
carrying out the basic journalistic tasks of checking facts and holding
the powerful to account. The four who got it right: Scott Ritter,
Warren Strobel, Jonathan Landay, and Charles J. Hanley.

Writer
Kamal Karim came away with a troubling lesson from his Kurdish homeland
in northern Iraq -- an opinion can get you a 30-year jail sentence. The
Iraqi Kurd, an Austrian citizen, returned to the semi- autonomous
Kurdistan expecting a new era of human rights after a U.S.-led invasion
toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003. But he soon learned the risks of
exposing what he said was the abuse of power by regional President
Masoud Barzani. After facing a 30-year prison term in December for
defamation that was reduced to 18 months in a retrial, he was pardoned
on Monday. "It affected me so much. It proved to me that the road to
justice in Kurdistan will be long," he told Reuters in an interview
this week. Karim was arrested by the Parastin intelligence service
attached to Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) after he wrote
articles on a Web site accusing the Kurdish leader of abusing power and
corruption.

From email I received:
Hearing Of The Military Quality Of Life And Veterans Affairs, And
Related Agencies Subcommittee Of The House Appropriations Committee on
March 14, 2006

REP. PRICE: … I'd like to ask you one very direct
question about our goals in Iraq and then move to a question of
strategy. Our ambassador Mr. Khalilzad recently stated, and I'm
quoting, "we have no goal of establishing permanent bases in Iraq". I'd
like to have that clarified because, as you know, this question has
arisen as to what our ultimate intentions and goals are. Can you make
an unequivocal commitment that the U.S. does not plan to establish
permanent bases in Iraq?

GEN. ABIZAID: No sir, I can't,
primarily because I don't formulate U.S. policy. I advise on U.S.
policy. The policy on long-term presence in Iraq hasn't been
formulated. And I don't imagine that it will emerge until a government
of national unity emerges.

REP. PRICE: Well, you understand, I'm
not asking you about the duration of our current involvement in Iraq,
that's an important question of course, as well but clearly that
depends on various contingencies. I'm asking you about our long-term
vision for our military presence in the region.

GEN. ABIZAID:
Clearly out long term vision for military presence in the region
requires a robust counter-terrorist capability. I think all of us need
to understand that groups like Al Qaeda and associated movements are
with us for a long time. We need to be able to face them out there with
the assistance of host governments, where we need to be able to deter
the ambitions of an expansionist like Iran. We need to be able to
provide institutional assistance in particular, throughout the region
so that we're helping others help themselves. And I think that the
institutional assistance that we have to provide to the Iraqi's and the
Afghans over time, to build the training, to do the training; to do the
mentoring; to help them build institutions that serve a democratic
government, are commitments that will have to take a long time. But
even there, I think it would be premature for me to predict what
they're going to be for Iraq until an Iraqi government emerges; and the
discussions between Iraq and the United States take place.

REP.
WALSH: …General, Mr. Price asked a question about permanency in the
Middle East of our military. I think that's a really important
question. And the fact that people back home say "well, how long are we
going to be in Iraq" and I said "well, I really don't know but we're
still in Germany, you know, 50 years later". And they kind of say "are
we going to be in the Middle East for 50 years". I don't know but it's
not really an (alias ?), our role in Germany was really to fortify the
eastern flank of Europe against the Soviet aggression. It is a very
different situation. But in the long run, do you believe that it's in
our national interest to have permanent bases in the Middle East?

GEN.
ABIZAID: Sir, we've been in the Middle East more than 50 years. We've
been in the Middle East ever since the -- however you would like to
call the dependency upon oil has developed. And our forces have been
there either as naval, air or land forces in one way or another for an
awful long time. And once the British pulled out the Arabian gulf, it
became more and more necessary for us to provide more and more force in
the region. I think it's very important that we understand what's
happening in the region. It's a struggle between extremist on the one
side and moderates on the other. And clearly it's in our national
interest to help the moderates prevail. That struggle will go on for a
long time. But it doesn't need to go on at the current footprint that
the United States of America has in the region provided we can
stabilize Iraq; stabilize Afghanistan; give confidence to Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia that they can defeat the extremists on their own; and
other nations: Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt. This struggle that's taking
place out there is, to a certain extent, driven by an increasingly
shrinking world, the global economy, the global information revolution,
etcetera. And I think that there is no doubt that there's a need for
some presence in the region over time, primarily to help people help
themselves through this period of extremist versus moderates, they give
the moderates a chance to win. To continue to deter Iran against a
strategy of hegemony in the region. And ultimately, it comes down to
the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own
nation and everybody else's depends upon. And so as long as we are the
United States of America, it's unfortunate but it's true that we've got
to carry the burden of protecting that with our allies. And our allies
do a good job helping us. So do we need 200,000 Americans in the Middle
East for the next 20 years? No, but we've got to stabilize Iraq. We've
got to stabilize Afghanistan. We need to maintain a presence that
protects the small nations and ensures the continued stability of the
region and the flow of those resources that are essential to our
well-being. I think that that number which I wouldn't want to speculate
at here, can be much less than it currently is. But what's more
important is that you have to have a spirit of partnership in the
region. Where people know if they need your help, they can call on you
and you will come. Unlike our experience in Vietnam where they called
on us and we didn't come, after we left.

Rather
than being received as invaluable intelligence, the messages are
discarded or, worse, considered signs of disloyalty. Rejecting the
facts on the ground apparently requires blaming the messengers. So far,
two top attaches at the embassy have been reassigned elsewhere for
producing factual reports that are too upsetting. The Bush
administration's preferred response to increasing disintegration is to
act as if it has a strategy that is succeeding. "More delusion as a
solution in the absence of a solution," said a senior state department
official. Under the pretence that Iraq is being pacified, the military
is partially withdrawing from hostile towns in the countryside and
parts of Baghdad. By reducing the number of soldiers, the
administration can claim its policy is working going into the midterm
elections. But the jobs the military doesn't want to perform are being
sloughed off on state department "provisional reconstruction teams"
(PRTs) led by foreign service officers. The rationale is that they will
win Iraqi hearts-and-minds by organising civil functions. The Pentagon
has informed the state department it will not provide security for
these officials and that mercenaries should be hired for protection
instead. Internal state department documents listing the PRT jobs,
dated March 30, reveal that the vast majority of them remain unfilled
by volunteers. So the professionals are being forced to take the
assignments in which "they can't do what they are being asked to do",
as a senior department official told me.

Eman
Ahmad Khamas: "I knew I had to come to the US to speak to the American
people about what is going on in Iraq. It is only the American people
who have the power to change their government's policy from one of
military aggression to one of peaceful negotiation in Iraq. If I can
tell the American people about the death and destruction I see everyday
in Iraq committed in their name at the hands of the US military, I know
they will fight that much harder to stop it."

Dr. Rashad Zidan:
"I was astonished to find that the majority Americans don't agree with
Bush's war and I am pleased to tell my fellow Iraqis about the many
Americans I met who are struggling to stop the war and put an end to
the occupation. We Iraqis believe that in a democracy, such as in the
US, the politicians do what the people want, so most of us believed
that the majority of Americans want to occupation to continue. I was
surprised to find that in the US the politicians are not listening to
the people. This is not the kind of democracy Iraqis want to see in
Iraq."

Dr. Entisar Mohammad Ariabi: "I can see how beautiful a
country the USA is, but it was difficult for me to enjoy this beauty
when my own country lies in ruins. I see the tall beautiful buildings,
many of them new, with windows and steel intact. They only served to
remind me of what my country used to be and how destroyed it is now.
Why would a government of a country that has so much beauty and wealth
choose to come to Iraq to destroy it? We need to end the occupation
now!"

Faiza Al-Araji: "Saddam was a terrible dictator. He stole
Iraq from the Iraqis, and now the occupation has stolen Iraq from the
Iraqis. We must find a solution to this present disaster, but the
solution cannot be found through a US military occupation."

Sureya
Sayadi: "The Kurds have been used by Saddam and now by the US as
political pawns. We are not any safer now than under Saddam. Our
current "government" doesn't represent the people, the leaders are
there for their own self interests. If all's well in Khurdistan, then
why do we have two presidents?"

Nadje Al-Ali: "Women, and
ultimately the children, are the big losers in this tragic US-UK
military misadventure. Iraqi women enjoyed the best position in terms
of equal rights, education and employment in the Middle East region and
today are relegated to prisons in their own homes. The government bends
toward being a fundamentalist Islamic administration. Women are losing
many of their prior freedoms."

Have
the brakes been put on the progress of democracy? Is, indeed, the
process actually moving in reverse? To ask such questions would once
have seemed implausible to the positivists who, with a sweep of the
hand across a map of the world, pointed complacently to the countries
that were advancing by leaps and bounds towards democracy or, if not by
leaps and bounds, at least moving inexorably forward. The train has
started moving and has picked up too much speed to stop, they insisted.
Democratisation is both a pledge and an imperative, they said. It was a
pledge on the part of Third World governments to the international
community which had declared it would no longer put up with
non-democratic regimes. And it was a prerequisite for world peace.
Peace is only possible between democratic nations which don't go around
attacking other nations, said Bush. With Sharansky's book on democracy
firmly tucked beneath his arm the US president promised that peace in
the Middle East would follow in the wake of democracy. In so saying he
raised the neo-conservatives' romantic, if not entirely innocent,
banner, "make democracy not war", launched a campaign to impose
democracy on the region using all the violence and coercion available
to the world's only superpower, and drove the Middle East further away
from peace than it has been for centuries.

The Arab public
quickly sniffed out the hypocrisy in the Bush administration's appeals.
There was too much wavering, procrastination and lack of coordination,
and it was not long before the people lost whatever confidence they had
in the efficacy of American support for democratisation in the region.
This erosion of confidence occurred a time when voices from within
America's ruling conservative right began to protest against the
squandering of US material and political resources on policies that
only seemed to augment the power and influence of Muslim
fundamentalists in the Middle East. Washington stopped talking about
democracy as a condition for peace and Bush stopped citing Sharansky as
one of his primary sources of inspiration.

The
Americans usually ask, at the end of each meeting: What can we do to
help the Iraqis? And I usually say: Tell your friends and neighbors the
truth of what is happening in Iraq, this isn't a noble mission, do not
send your sons to war, put pressure on your government to pull the
armies out of Iraq, and stop building the bases. Do not interfere with
the future of Iraq, leave Iraq for the Iraqis. The last time, we had
two days of joint activities in various neighborhoods inside San
Francisco, we had many participants, one of them was Scott Ritter, the
Weapons Inspector in Iraq during the embargo. He spoke to the audience
about his rejection of the war since the beginning, that Iraq had no
Weapons of Mass Destruction, that this American administration is
practicing an incorrect policy in Iraq; they waged the war for false
reasons, and until now they are justifying their staying in Iraq with
false justifications. And when people asked him- What should they do,
he got angry, and answered harshly: Don't be fools, you put this
administration as a government, don't say –someone forged the
elections. You should open your eyes and change your lives. Change your
life style from relying on Oil and its revenues that come from
occupying other countries, tell your government that you can live in
austerity on your resources only, there is no need for wars and
steeling the revenues of others. I sat in amazement, watching this
angry, frank debate. He accused them, and they refused these
accusations. I knew the truth of America here, during this month.
People here are weak, submissive, their will taken from them.

They
want the change, but do not know how, or else, they are yielding
people, who lost hope in their ability to cause change. The decision in
this country is in the hands of the wealthy, who own the money, the
banks, and the giant companies, and of course- the Media, that controls
the minds of simple people. Even the election system is controlled by
money; the Candidate needs millions of dollars for the election
campaign, meaning- who would care for a Candidate of principals,
humanity, justice, and peace, who shall take care of him, or finance
his campaign? But that who is ready to market the ideas of the rich
class, the class that loves wars and investments, will find someone to
spend millions on his campaign, will tell people all the nice promises
and glamorous slogans. They will elect him, and when he gets to the
chair, and sits in the position of decision- making, he will carry out
the instructions of the major companies that financed his campaign, not
the poor Americans who elected him. And so, people would live in one
realm, and the decision- maker, having abandoned them, would live in
another. This is the reality of things in America. And the Iraq war is
the most evident example.

There is a huge popular anger, from
before the war, till now, but people's opinion is marginalized, no one
sees that opinion in the newspapers or the media, not even give a hint
about it in a petty way. It gets lost with the tide of news, with
different features about actors and athletes, then the commercials, the
weather broadcast, the financial and ecological news. And the issue of
Iraq gets lost in the jam of stories, commercials, and empty talk. I
keep asking myself, when I see the American's sorrow and their
inability to change decisions, or influence its makers in the country:
Is this the democracy that Bush and Gondalisa Rice brag about? For
which they destroyed Iraq in order to implement? The government is
strong, rich, and opinionated about decision and opinion, the people
are poor, weak, and no one cares about them, they walk out in
demonstrations, they shout, some of them are arrested and go to jail,
others make documentary films, and talk against the government's
policies. But in result, who cares? How many of the 350 million
Americans will hear him? And where is the decision? The decision is in
the hands of those who sit in the White House, the Pentagon, and the
Congress. And they are as far off as can be from the ordinary citizen
and his opinion. As far off as can be…. I felt sorry for these people.
This country is definitely living in a crisis, and the Iraq war is the
issue that revealed everything as it truly is. (This link was in
yesterday’s post also. I really liked it, so I posted it again. – Susan)

OPINION AND COMMENTARY FROM AN IRAQI-AMERICAN (via email):

As
you read this article (below), please make note of the fact that it is
Sunni, Shi`i and Christian religious officials (aka "clerics") as well
as some Kurds who are supporting legitimate resistance against the
occupation. Note also the spin and out and out lies in the article:
"the 'legitimate right’ of Iraqis to resist what they called the
occupation." Notice that it is the newspaper that places scare quotes
around legitimate right when in reality resistance against foreign
domination and all forms of tyranny is a right under international law.
As for "what they call the occupation", if it walks like a duck, quacks
like a duck, and looks like a duck, it is a duck regardless of the
official legal designation someone has managed to put on it.

What
is going on in Iraq now fits the legal definition of an occupation
regardless of the legal technicalities the Bush and Blair
administrations have manipulated into being. And then there is this
little gem from Air Force Maj. Todd Vician: "the violence is brought
about by the terrorists who try to attack Iraqi security forces,
civilians and coalition forces as well." That statement goes well
beyond spin. It is purely and simply a lie that flies in the face of
well know reality – reality which the US military (if not the US
government) has openly and repeatedly acknowledged.

And here is
an example of how a subtly spun statement can create a completely false
impression: "The remarks of the 16 religious leaders… suggested a
growing feeling among Iraqis that the presence of foreign forces is adding to
the country's instability." (emphasis is mine) Notice how, according to
this, the presence of foreign forces is mere ADDING TO the country’s
instability, when in fact the presence and actions of foreign (i.e.
occupation) forces is the originator and the cause of Iraq’s
instability. And then there is this recent poll result: "an
overwhelming majority of Arab Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds believe the
U.S. plans to keep troops in Iraq permanently. Most also believe the
United States would refuse to leave regardless of whether the Iraqi
government requested it." They are absolutely right, of course. One of
the real purposes behind the invasion was to establish a permanent US
military presence in Iraq. Even as we speak the Americans are building
several huge permanent – oh, excuse me "enduring" (and the effective
difference between permanent and enduring is what exactly?) - military
bases that look like small American cities – at least one even has an
auto dealership). And the US will not have to refuse to leave. Right
now the Bushies are working very hard, and somewhat effectively, to
prevent Ibrahim Ja`fari from being reinstalled as "prime minister"
(lack of upper case is intentional) in favour of wannabe US puppets
`Adel `Abdul Mehdi and Qasem Daoud (more about this later, insha allah
– i.e. God willing). Even if Ja`fari succeeds in becoming "prime
minister" the US has probably already created economic, political, and
military conditions that will make it quite impossible for any Iraqi
government – or "government" – to request an end to the occupation.
Perhaps there is one sign of hope in this article, and that is that the
Bush administration has not completely succeeded in dividing Iraq
against itself.

Two
years after U.S. authorities ceremoniously declared Iraq to be
sovereign again, top religious leaders say Iraqis remain under military
occupation, have a right to fight foreign troops and still don't govern
themselves. Their statements, made at the conclusion of a peace
conference in London on Tuesday, provided a stamp of approval from
Iraq's most influential Sunni and Shiite Muslim clerics for their
countrymen to step up attacks aimed at hastening the withdrawal of
U.S., British and other troops. Two Christian archbishops and ethnic
Kurdish leaders, whose community has previously supported the foreign
military presence, joined Jordan's Prince Hassan bin Talal in endorsing
a communiqué underscoring the "legitimate right" of Iraqis to resist
what they called the occupation. The U.S. and British governments say
their forces are in Iraq at the request of the government to assist in
security operations. An expert in the law of armed conflict concurred,
saying that because foreign forces are in Iraq with approval of the
U.N. Security Council, they are not legally occupation forces
regardless of how Iraqi religious leaders might define them. The
clerics were adamant in their interpretation of Iraqis' rights to
resist. Their call comes at a time when Shiite militants, like their
Sunni counterparts, have engaged in armed confrontations with troops of
the U.S.-led coalition, including a raid on a Shiite mosque Sunday in
which at least 17 Iraqis were killed. "We are here to say that any
military action against an occupying force is a legitimate act
authorized under international law," said Sheik Majid al-Hafeed, a
representative of the Ulmma Kurdish Union of Iraq. "The occupation is
something that everybody is calling for an end to," added Sayyid Salih
al-Haydary, outgoing minister of Shiite religious affairs.

PEACE ACTION:
No More Victims was founded in September 2002. We work to find medical
sponsorships for war-injured Iraqi children and to forge ties between
the children, their families and communities in the United States. We
believe one of the most effective means of combating militarism is to
focus on direct relief to its victims. We are committed to developing
information and strategies that empower local communities to engage in
direct aid and advocacy.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: We seek a world free of war and the threat of war,We seek a society with equity and justice for all,We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled,We seek an earth restored.-from the Friends Council on National Legislation (Quakers) in the USA.

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